Saturday, May 14, 2005

CBS hits bottom, continues to dig...

This may make the Rathergate memos seem like child's play...CBS aired a report on the ongoing controversy about the proper use of filibusters, and, according to Powerlinehttp://powerlineblog.com/archives/010443.php :The segment included an interview with Ken Starr, in which Starr, seemingly in reference to the Republicans' effort to end the filibuster, said: "This is a radical, radical departure from our history and from our traditions, and it amounts to an assault on the judicial branch of government."The only problem is, he was talking about something else completely. After seeing the report, Starr emailed the following:I sat on Saturday with Gloria Borger for 20 minutes approximately, had a wide ranging, on-camera discussion. In the piece that I have now seen, and which I gather has been lavishly quoted, CBS employed two snippets. The 'radical departure from our history' snippet was specifically addressed to the practice of invoking judicial philosophy as a grounds for voting against a qualified nominee of integrity and experience. I said in sharp language that that practice was wrong. Applying random out of context quotes to a completely different story? This is the journalistic bottom of the barrel. While the mainstream media bemoans the public's free-falling confidence in traditional media (and lashes out at bloggers), they have no one to blame but themselves when they conduct themselves so shamefully. I do not believe this will become as big of a story as Rathergate, simply because this behavior is now expected of the media (and CBS in particular) by the public. That's why they don't watch/read it...Interestingly, CBS has refused to provide a copy of the tape to Starr...wonder why?View the report here: http://www.cbsnews.com/htdocs/search/search.php?searchString=ken+starr&source=cbsvideos&sort=1&type=any&num=10&offset=0